Amanda Jane Graham
A Tribute To The Irish Community, Butte, Montana 1916-1919
Irish Diaspora, Memory and Family History
A Tribute to the Irish Community, Butte, Montana 1916–1919 explores Irish emigration, diaspora, community, and memory through the history of an Irish-American community in Butte, Montana.
The project grew from Amanda Jane Graham's grandmother's childhood memories of growing up in Butte's Irish-American community in the early twentieth century. Through drawing, etching, embroidery, sculpture, and found images, Graham reconstructs stories of migration, political activism, childhood, and community, examining how personal and collective histories are remembered, transmitted, and transformed across generations.
The work connects the experiences of an Irish community in Montana with events in Ireland during a period of profound political and social change, including the 1916 Easter Rising, the 1917 Butte mining disaster and Éamon de Valera's 1919 visit to Montana.
Rather than reconstructing history as a fixed narrative, Graham focuses on how history survives through storytelling: family memories, repeated stories, objects, and images.
The Irish Community in Butte
At the turn of the last century, Butte, Montana, was home to a large Irish-American community as the city's mining industry developed. For Graham's family, Butte was not simply a place of emigration but a community where Irish politics and connections with Ireland shaped daily life.
The stories Graham's grandmother passed down offer a personal route into this wider history.
Among the memories was the story of travelling long distances with members of the Irish community to hear Éamon de Valera speak during his 1919 visit to the United States. These journeys, together with memories of the mining community and the political involvement of Irish-Americans, became part of the imaginative landscape from which the work developed.
The project therefore moves between two places: Ireland and Butte. It considers what happens to histories, identities and political commitments when they are carried across the Atlantic and become part of the life of a diaspora community.
De Valera's Rally, Montana, 1919
2009
Graphite, ink, hard- and soft-ground etching, embroidery and wood
240 × 70 cm
This work draws on memories of the journeys undertaken by members of the Irish community in Butte to hear Éamon de Valera speak during his 1919 visit to Montana.
Through the combination of etched and drawn imagery with embroidery, the work brings together historical events and the remembered experience of community.
De Valera's Rally Montana 1919, 2009. Detail
A Story Carried Through Generations
The stories Graham heard from her grandmother became an important source of both imagery and methodology.
Her grandmother recalled growing up in Butte within a large Irish-American community whose political and cultural connections extended back to Ireland. Among the stories was one about her, at the age of three, unknowingly carrying money concealed in her doll's pram to Ireland in support of the 1916 Easter Rising.
For Graham, these stories and her insatiable demand for their retelling were central to her childhood, and can recall them in exquisite detail.
The project explores this space between memory, historical record and childhood imagination. The process of remembering becomes part of the work's subject.
Butte Mining Disaster, 1917
2009
Graphite, ink, hard- and soft-ground etching on wood
210 × 90 cm
The work responds to the catastrophic mining disaster in Butte in 1917 and to Graham's grandmother's memories of witnessing the tragedy and its impact on the community.
The mine and its surrounding landscape form are central to understanding Butte: a place shaped simultaneously by migration, labour, community and loss.
The Pram: An Object With Its Own History
The story of the doll's pram sits at the centre of the project.
At the age of three, Graham's grandmother unknowingly smuggled money concealed within her doll's pram on a journey to Ireland. The money was intended to support the 1916 Easter Rising.
The story brings together childhood, migration, political activism and family memory in a single object. The pram thus became more than an illustration of the story: it became a material connection between Graham's grandmother's childhood in Butte and Ireland's political history.
Read more about The Pram That Helped the Rising here.
The Richest Hill On Earth
2013
Steel and dolls pram
210 × 100 cm
The Richest Hill On Earth revisits the family story through sculpture, transforming the remembered object into a work that carries both personal and historical associations.
The pram functions simultaneously as a childhood object, a family artefact and a vessel for a story about the Irish diaspora and political engagement.
Image from A Tribute to the Irish Community, Butte, Montana 1916–1919 at the RHA Gallery, Dublin in 2017.
The Pram, the BBC, and The Repair Shop
The original doll's pram that inspired the story was later selected for restoration by the BBC television programme The Repair Shop.
The restoration was filmed, and the programme was scheduled for broadcast, with the story receiving advance coverage in the local press. The episode was subsequently not broadcast.
The restoration nevertheless forms an important part of the object's history. The pram has moved through several generations and contexts: from a childhood possession in Butte, to an object within a family story, to the inspiration for Graham's artwork, and later to an object the BBC considered worthy of professional conservation and restoration.
Migration and Transatlantic Journeys
The S.S. Tuscania
2009
Hard-ground etching and aquatint
70 × 35 cm
This work forms part of Graham's wider exploration of migration, transatlantic journeys and the movement of people between Ireland, Britain and North America.
Memory, History and Storytelling
The project is both biographical and autobiographical, beginning with stories her grandmother told Graham about childhood in Butte, Montana.
These stories led to a wider investigation into Irish emigration, the Irish-American community, political activism and the connections maintained between diaspora communities and Ireland.
Graham is interested in the space between memory and historical record: how stories are remembered, repeated, and reimagined, while continuing to carry personal and collective histories.
Through drawing, etching, embroidery and sculpture, the project uses family memory as a route into a much larger history of migration, community and belonging.
Exhibition History
2017 A Tribute To The Irish Community, Butte, Montana 1916-1919, RHA Gallery, Dublin.
2014 Essays For The House Of Memory, Ormston House, Limerick.
2013 Repetition, Black Print Studios, The Cross Gallery, Dublin.
2013 A Tribute To The Irish Community, Butte, Montana 1916-1919, Áras Inis Gluaire, Co. Mayo; Excel Gallery, Co. Tipperary; Birr Theatre and Arts Centre, Co. Offaly
2012 A Tribute to The Irish Community, Butte, Montana, 1916-1919, The Upstairs Gallery, Kilkenny
Exhibition Documentation
Cross Gallery
Repetition
De Valera's Rally Montana 1919
240 x 70 cm, 2009
Butte Mining Disaster, 1917
210 x 90 cm, 2009
Dublin 2017
Ormston House
Essays for the House of Memory, Ormston House
The Richest HillOn Earth
Steel and Dolls Pram
210x100cm, 2013